you're using hard #'s as if there is no such thing as confidence, panic, or public perception.

Bter knows it. which is why they negotiated with the terrorist hacker.

with POW, we took the Gox hit but it didn't kill Bitcoin b/c of the resource investment of miners who can't and won't just quit. not to mention the network effect in place.

I tried to give enough room for all those factors and posted a worst case scenario. The fact is NXT community is still pretty condensed compared to Bitcoin and there is simply no public perception and not much public to dump coins in case of panic, which is both a blessing and a curse. There's been a few serious bugs in the past few months that were quite serious and would probably make Bitcoin users dump if they were to happen in Bitcoin network, however, NXTers are not that dispersed yet. Another factor is, the price is already so low that it doesn't take much capital to absorb dumped coins. That's why even in the worst case scenario it wouldn't have much effect.

5% of the stake doesn't let the hacker control anything except the price for a while, 51% is required now to control the network and 90% in a few months when Transparent Forging is enabled.

But I agree that centralized exchanges are no good, that's why NXT is implementing decentralized tools - multigateway is one of them, it is not 100% decentralized, but it would require hacker to break into 3 servers controlled by 3 different people, instead of just 1 server as is the case with a centralized exchange.

this condensed nature is precisely the problem with POS. as i understand it looking back in this thread, NXT is highly concentrated amongst it's early adopters which is the opposite of what you want. i fail to see how this improves with time; in fact, it should only get worse the way that forging works.

of course it's quite possible if Bter didn't do it, the price of all NXT on the market would be 0.

It would stay depressed at 4-5k satoshi for 2-3 months if he chose to sell in equal portions (1m each day), that's how long it would take for the market to absorb 50M volume. If he chose to sell all in one go, it would go to 100-200 satoshi for a few hours, buying 50m NXTs at 500 satoshi takes only 250 Bitcoins, that's about daily volume of NXT trading. So all the 50m would be quickly bought within 1 day, that's rough calculations, give or take a few hours. Gradual selling over 2-3 months would hurt more because it'd be more prolonged bleeding, but not dramatic either.

Actually the hacker admitted himself that he was a hold. Ironically, if the hacker kept his 51 million coins, it probably would had caused NXT to go up through deflation. Just like Satoshi never spending his BTC is very deflationary on the available supply.

Reality is that NXT's up and downs is largely due to whales engaging in pump and dumps and one or two whales lost their funds at BTer. If the hacker had kept his fund there may actually be *gasp* stability to NXT.

i seriously doubt this.

if a known thief and hacker had been allowed to keep 5% of the NXT stake, he would have destroyed confidence in the entire system causing a plunge in the price.

of course it's quite possible if Bter didn't do it, the price of all NXT on the market would be 0.

It would stay depressed at 4-5k satoshi for 2-3 months if he chose to sell in equal portions (1m each day), that's how long it would take for the market to absorb 50M volume. If he chose to sell all in one go, it would go to 100-200 satoshi for a few hours, buying 50m NXTs at 500 satoshi takes only 250 Bitcoins, that's about daily volume of NXT trading. So all the 50m would be quickly bought within 1 day, that's rough calculations, give or take a few hours. Gradual selling over 2-3 months would hurt more because it'd be more prolonged bleeding, but not dramatic either.

you're using hard #'s as if there is no such thing as confidence, panic, or public perception.

Bter knows it. which is why they negotiated with the terrorist hacker.

with POW, we took the Gox hit but it didn't kill Bitcoin b/c of the resource investment of miners who can't and won't just quit. not to mention the network effect in place.

You don't even need a derivative market (although that is another way to leverage the nothing at stake problem). You have some coins in block x, you sell the coins, you now have nothing however you can re-org the chain back from block x. Why? Although you have nothing "now" in the past back at block x you did have something. You are attacking with the "memory" or history of coins.

First you must secure $50 bln. (as in $50 000 000 000) funding to buy enough stake. Then you can try.

apparently it only costs 200BTC, or approx $100,000, to buy 45M NXT.

not quite the same maths.

Apparently yes, if you're a hacked exchange and the hacker is willing to sell, which is two big 'IFs'.

of course it's quite possible if Bter didn't do it, the price of all NXT on the market would be 0.

You don't even need a derivative market (although that is another way to leverage the nothing at stake problem). You have some coins in block x, you sell the coins, you now have nothing however you can re-org the chain back from block x. Why? Although you have nothing "now" in the past back at block x you did have something. You are attacking with the "memory" or history of coins.

First you must secure $50 bln. (as in $50 000 000 000) funding to buy enough stake. Then you can try.

PoW may be the right solution way but economically it presents it's own problems. Currently all the holders are subsidizing the cheap transaction fees. Once that goes away either transaction costs have to go way up or the system can be cheaply attacked. Last block transactions fees were .06 BTC and the holders subsidized those low fees with 25 BTC inflationary block reward. No matter which way you slice it no one can honestly know that PoW is working. Currently it's block reward speculation that's keeping people mining not anything to do with transaction fee income or security of block chain. Looking at PoW separately from bitcoin. Either it has to be expensive and secure but for that fees have to be high or it is cheap but then it can't be secure. It can't be both cheap and secure. That's the downside of "tethering" to the real world of using resources on PoW. Perhaps as you stated cypher bitcoin will evolve to be the reserve currency of the world but then it will likely look very different then what it it today.

well now, that is Bitcoin's Tension isn' it? we don't know for sure. but all indications are it is, 5.5 yrs in. sure the tx fees need to increase as block rewards go down to compensate miners. i think they will. personally, i don't care which way Bitcoin goes as either a reserve currency (huge fees tacked onto few tx's) or mainly as a transactional currency (small fees tacked onto a boatload of tx's). it may not matter in the end. what may only matter is that it's open source, transparent, and idealistically all inclusive for ppl worldwide. as long as the average person feels they aren't getting screwed by The Man, that may be all that is necessary for success.

No clue. But do you disagree that if working correctly PoS would be better then PoW or no? This is OT to this thread anyways. Maybe a different thread is better. Your opinion on the subject is valuable.

i think that solving the BGP was a huge deal. for the first time in history data can be secured on the internet and consensus achieved despite the presence of malicious attackers. and yet the POS ppl come in here and diss the very essence of that POW accomplishment by Satoshi.

they have a helluva lot more to prove going forward than any of us who acknowledge said accomplishment.

No clue. But do you disagree that if working correctly PoS would be better then PoW or no? This is OT to this thread anyways. Maybe a different thread is better. Your opinion on the subject is valuable.

i don't really think so.

if you go back thru the last 2d of postings btwn mrE, kodtycoon, and the rest of us POS naysayers, you'll see all the arguments as well as the paper posted by JR explaining why POS won't work.

"So basically you use transactions-as-proof-of-stake. That sounds reasonable; it's as good as I can think of at this point, although it has the moderately-serious-but-not-fatal flaws that I described in my On Stake article. I eagerly await a full whitepaper description and open source code of your complete protocol so both myself and more formal academics can properly whack at the specifics."

Also Nxt cannot be forked back more then 720 blocks so that alone would thwart the attack mentioned in your paper. Not to mention the economic clustering feature and transparent forging that's in development...

Just like with bitcoin, I'd thought you be more aware that systems evolve. Just looking at their surface and taking them at face value is incredibly short sighted.

like i've said before, Vitalik's understanding of "fairness" doesn't impress me. so how does he apply his view of the world into Ethereum and now NXT? probably the same way.

you talk like NXT is a guaranteed success and everyone who disagrees with you is shortsighted. you may be right; but again you may be wrong.

you talk like bitcoin is a guaranteed success. PoW is either bitcoins greatest strength or it's greatest weakness.

This new conspiracy theory contradicts my old theory that Bitcoin is "just" a pilot project. It could be that Bitcoin is the real deal! Because no unregulated altcoin will likely be able to dethrone bitcoin as the leading cryptocurrency. AND, any official cryptocurrency will take YEARS for the politicians to introduce. And bitcoin has already a massive network of computing power. And the Bitcoin technology is innovative and revolutionizing, with a growing number of investors, developers and entrepreneurs.

Alternatively there is a power elite behind it all, and a huge boost for bitcoin will only be used for causing politicians to very quickly introduce an official cryptocurrency. So my old theory may still be valid.

My personal banking conspiracy goes thus:

A rogue central or private bank buys up coins off exchange in large numbers - say 100k - 200K. The price does not matter as its a drop in the ocean to a bank like JPM or freshly printed for the CB.

Then just do the tried and tested gold rigging manouvre.

Good news in the bitcoin ecosystem? Dump. Price reaching technical levels for a breakout ? Dump. Price starting to trickle down ..Dump to scare out recent buyers.

When the price hits rock bottom...simply buy off exchange again, say from a large corporate miner for a premium above the market rate, rinse and repeat until bitcoin is finished.

Add in some influence in the MSM and pay for internet fora trolling and online sentiment manipulation for good measure.

Why are JP Morgan repeatedly trying to patent a similar system to bitcoin?

/conspiracy.

I think what is happening right now is simply a combination of 1) speculators selling in frustration at lack of bubble, 2) margin calls and stop hunting by whales with deep pockets, 3) momentum traders jumping on board trying to short the hell out of bitcoin + sell out and buy back in lower (how many new active troll accounts are there on here last few weeks?)

Currently we seem very oversold and the price is dislocating far from development in the bitcoin ecosystem and the very healthy fundamentals.

The great trap of humanity is to accept that the ruled should obey completely opposite standards compared to the rulers. It is the source of all evil and most suffering in the world, and it's everywhere.

If unlimited borrowing with no thought of repayment followed by strategic default is acceptable behaviour for governments, and multinational corporations, and central banks, then it's acceptable behaviour for individuals too.

If any of these agencies or their cronies want to contest the ethical nature of such a course, they can lead by example or GTFO.

well, you know what they say...you borrow small, the bank owns you. you borrow big, you own the bank.